Ah, but how do I know what books you're offering?
Sure, you could put a section into your personal page, but
in order to track down a book, a prospective user would need
to look up everyones' personal page. Not very easy, and very
demoralising since the vast majority of monks are not
offering books yet.
So does the Monastery set up a virtual library catalogue
where interested monks register what they're offering?
Actually this could be an interesting idea with
possibilities beyond just books... | [reply] |
A jcwren tag would be perfect for this task...
(like location, birthday...)
Few tags would do fine:
Book-Offered
Book-Needed
His page whould be a perfect place to look for available/needed books.
UPDATE : I must say why I prefer this way, rather than SuperSearch.
The stats page allow us, by it centralized stat gathering a way to got global stats about the way books move.
I mean with few property inside some tags,
(namely: title of the book, people who gave/received it, date it was given/received)
we could be able to know how many times a book was given, who get/gives the books, and a lot weird/useless stats...
(The average time a book stay in someone hands ?)
(Most asked book ?)
| [reply] |
As i said, we could use Super Search as the card catalog
(homenodes are the cards).
(elaborate example deleted)
Update: arhuman's idea would work except there
would be lag because homenode changes are instant whereas
stats are not. Tyke's concern with the obscurity problem
could be addressed by adding some mention of it to one
of the site FAQs, and book-related form
elements in super search.
ps - jcwren says homenode tags update every day at 3:00AM EST/EDT
pss - homenode tags can now be scanned immediately
Update: Virtual Distributed Library Online! | [reply] |
The problem is that the newbies-- the ones who most
need the books(*) -- are fairly unlikely to think of
using super search to look for "books-offered". Some
sort of visual pointer is needed to give a newcomer
the idea that there might be such a thing as a virtual
library.
(*) <Hmmm>Isn't this being needlessly patronising
to newbies?</Hmmm>
Update epoptai I'm not trying to knock the idea.
I think that it's good. Just taking it one step further
to make it even more useful :)
| [reply] |
If the giver is willing to shell out for the first person (or gives it by hand) then there's an easier way... each pays the postage to the next in the line.
Quite frankly, how much would it cost to send the Camel book from Ghana to Outer Mongolia? | [reply] |
